The two and a half years since the declared end of the recession have been singularly harmful to middle-class blacks in terms of layoffs and unemployment, according to economists and recent government data. About one in five black workers have public-sector jobs, and African-American workers are one-third more likely than white ones to be employed in the public sector. Jobless rates among blacks have consistently been about double those of whites. In October 2011, the black unemployment rate was 15.1%, compared with 8% for whites. In summer 2011, the black unemployment rate hit 16.7%, its highest level since 1984. Economists say that there are probably a variety of reasons for the racial gap, including generally lower educational levels for African-Americans and the fact that many live in areas that have been slow to recover economically. Though the precise number of African-Americans who have lost public-sector jobs nationally since 2009 is unclear, observers say that the current situation in Chicago is typical. There, nearly two-thirds of 212 city employees facing layoffs are black, according to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union. The central role played by government employment in black communities is hard to overstate. African-Americans in the public sector earn 25% more than other black workers. Blacks have relied on government jobs in large numbers since at least Reconstruction, when the United States Postal Service hired freed slaves. A study by the Brookings Institution in 2007 found that fewer than one-third of blacks born to middle-class parents went on to earn incomes greater than their parents, compared with more than two-thirds of whites from the same income bracket. The foreclosure crisis also wiped out a large part of a generation of black homeowners. The layoffs are not expected to end any time soon. The United States Postal Service, where about 25% of employees are black, is considering eliminating 220,000 positions in order to stay solvent, and areas with large black populations — from urban Detroit to rural Jefferson County, Miss. — are struggling with budget problems that could also lead to mass layoffs. Update: Walter Russell Mead says that things are probably only going to get worse for blacks.

Jesus Montes Valera is accused of raping a woman at knifepoint in his apartment. According to the police report, the attack occurred at Valera’s residence on the second floor of a two-family home. The victim was a woman in her 40s who knew Valera. After reporting the attack to police, she was taken to a local hospital for treatment for injuries. A warranted search of Valera’s home turned up evidence that corroborated the woman’s story, police say. Because of his immigration status, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement assisted police with the arrest and put Valera on retainer. Valera has been charged with first-degree aggravated sexual assault. He is being held on $500,000 bond and has been taken to court for arraignment.

Manuel Enrique Zelaya-Rodriguez, 32, has been sentenced to 15 years and 8 months in prison. Zelaya-Rodriguez, also known as Mecianico, faced a prison sentence of 2-20 years. U.S. District Judge C. Lynwood Smith Jr. ordered that Zelaya-Rodriquez, who is an illegal immigrant, be subject to deportation after completing the prison sentence. Zelaya-Rodriquez was arrested by police in September 2009. Police said that a 15-year-old girl was in Zelaya-Rodriguez’s car at the time of his arrest during a traffic stop. She told police at the time that she had worked for him as a prostitute since August 2009. Police contacted FBI agents after learning that the teen was transported to Alabama from Mexico to work as a prostitute. Zelaya-Rodriguez was convicted in September 2010 of trafficking the underage girl for sex, coercing a minor to engage in prostitution, harboring an illegal alien and failing to file a report with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about an illegal alien in his employment.

African-American William Boyland Jr. sought bribes from undercover agents who posed as associates of a carnival operator scouting locations in his district, and a real estate investor looking to break into the Brooklyn market, the new federal complaint says. The timing of the shakedown makes Boyland's actions more brazen: the feds say that he and a member of his staff asked an undercover agent for $7,000 in March 2011 — shortly after Manhattan federal prosecutors charged him with soliciting bribes from a health care organization.

Rand Simberg points out that the notion that intelligence is not heritable is ludicrous and so is the belief that all races are equally intelligent. Update: Steve Sailer has decided to use humor as a way of dealing with Sullivan's critics.

Gabrielle Handy was arrested after police managed to pull over the vehicle after it was followed by a concerned motorist for over 20 miles. Police said that the car was travelling up to speeds of 65 miles per hour while the baby was held outside the window. The baby's mother, who was also in the vehicle, did not offer any explanation for the incident to police.

The arrest stems from an extremely disturbing video that showed a verbal altercation between a group of teenagers and a 35-year-old woman turn violent. Though police have said that the victim is not pregnant, she claimed she was during the fight, and the teenagers proceeded to aggressively beat her anyway.

Jordan Liu, 19, was accused of molesting the children in his care after their mother found out while explaining to her eldest son what abuse was, using the example of football coach Jerry Sandusky. The Asian teenager from Alhambra, California has been arrested on sexual assault charges for the abuse of an eight-year-old and a three-year-old. Liu is being held on $2.7 million bail.

The reckoning is that the developed nations need to generate 27.2 million jobs in the next two years to return to normal. But the likelihood is that only 2.5 million will materialize, or a woefully shocking 25 million fewer jobs than necessary. The developing nations will have something in the neighborhood of 53 million slots to fill in the next couple of years, but the projection is for the addition of only 38 million jobs, or 15 million shy of that mark. The upshot is that in the coming 24 months the total shortfall in global job creation will approach a formidable 40 million slots. This is ideal tinder for social and political instability in any number of places around the world. It certainly promises to occupy front and center in the coming election in the United States and jobs are a political imperative as well in China, the Middle East and across Europe.

John Spain discusses some of the effects that immigration has had on Ireland:

Was that necessarily a good thing, given the pressure that schools, hospitals and our welfare system are now under? Or was it another mistake that we made during the Celtic Tiger years?

Even though we are continually told that multi-culturalism is good for us, have Irish people the right to say that, actually, they preferred the way things used to be? And if they do, does that make them racist?

Let's take one example. The relentless propaganda about the benefits of multi-culturalism makes little impression on many parents in areas here where there is a high concentration of immigrants.

In commuter towns and suburbs around Dublin and other cities, there is particular pressure on schools which have a high number of immigrant children who do not have English as a first language or who have no English at all.

In some classes in primary schools, more than half the children may have little or no English, which means the teacher takes much longer to get through lessons. This means that the progress of the Irish kids is much slower that it used to be.

Of course there were promises of extra language support teachers for these schools, but the resources available are a fraction of what would be needed to deal with the situation.

How would you, as the parent of an Irish child, feel if you were confronted with this problem, especially if you realize that that it could mean that your child will still be behind when he or she leaves school and tries to get a college place or a job?

That's what multi-culturalism means in practice in some areas here. No one denies that being able to get a flavor of other cultures is interesting. But the happy clappy propaganda that insists multi-culturalism is creating a far better new Ireland does not convince many people who deal with it on the ground on a daily basis.

Schools are just one area where this pressure is visible. There is intense competition for the few jobs that become available, with downward pressure on wages.

Rightly or wrongly, our high level of immigration is now perceived by many of the people who have expressed support for former Mayor Scully as part of the problem, especially since the economy has tanked and state spending on all kinds of services is shrinking fast.

Unfortunately, the Irish media - likes it counterpart in the United States - seems set on turning every predominantly white nation into a Third World hellhole in the name of diversity.

Few American colleges would mark a 15% graduation rate as a turning point. But at Coppin State University, 15% is two points better than 2010’s rate. Coppin, a historically black institution founded in 1900 at what was then called Baltimore’s Colored High School, has the lowest graduation rate of any traditional public college in Maryland. In the past 10 years, the quotient has declined from the mid-20s to the mid-teens. Coppin has the lowest graduation rate in the state system partly because it attracts the least-prepared students. Three-quarters of those who enroll at Coppin require academic remediation. The University System of Maryland pledged to halve its graduation gap by 2015, which means narrowing the 21-point spread between completion rates for underrepresented minorities (e.g. blacks) and other students. Twelve percent of freshmen at the University of the District of Columbia graduate within six years, according to an analysis of completion rates for three recent class years. The graduation rate is 32% at Norfolk State University, 34% at Morgan State in Baltimore and 36% at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. All four are historically black institutions.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Republicans have an edge of 56% to 43% in expressing more enthusiasm than usual about the upcoming presidential election. In addition, Obama’s approval rating has dropped the most — 10 percentage points, from 40% to 30% — among pure independents. These are the roughly 14% of national adults who neither identify with one of the two major parties nor indicate a leaning.

Sixty-five percent of New Jersey State householders live in homes that they own. But for black households, that number drops to 40%. For Hispanics, the home ownership rate is even lower, at 36%, even as the community’s population has exploded in the last decade, according to data from the 2010 Census. Between 2000 and 2010, the state’s overall home ownership rate stayed roughly flat. Hispanic households saw a modest increase of about 3 percentage points, but black households saw no change. Hispanic population growth has been rapid in New Jersey and many who have come to the state in the last decade are immigrants. According to RealtyTrac, a company that monitors foreclosures nationwide, nearly all of the top 20 zip codes in New Jersey with properties in some stage of foreclosure from 2008 to 2010 were in towns such as Camden, Irvington and Newark, with heavy black and Hispanic populations. In parts of Plainfield, Paterson and Elizabeth in 2010, more than 5% of all housing units were in some stage of foreclosure. High unemployment rates have also exacerbated the financial struggles for many black residents in low-income neighborhoods. When it comes to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, data suggests that many more of those loans tended to go toward the African-American and Hispanic communities. During the housing bubble, a lot of people who became homeowners probably shouldn’t have become homeowners - many of these people were African-Americans and Latinos. But not everyone experienced setbacks. More than 61% of Asian householders in New Jersey were homeowners in 2010, an increase of nearly 59,000 over the previous decade. Home ownership rates among non-Hispanic white households grew by 1 percentage point since 2000 and remained the highest in the state at 77%.

The black man was shot in the 10500 block of South Vermont Avenue, said Sgt. Harry Drucker of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau. "The victim was standing outside the liquor store when a dark-colored vehicle pulled up and stopped. Several male Hispanic suspects exited the vehicle and shot the victim multiple times in the upper torso," Drucker said. The shooting was gang-related, according to the Sheriff's Department. The Latino assailants returned to the vehicle after shooting the black victim and were last seen going south on Vermont Avenue, said Deputy Tony Moore.

The numbers, released to comply with a new city law, only cover July 1 to Sept. 30, 2011 — two-thirds of which was summer school. Police arrested 63 students - about one a day in 50 days of classes - and issued 182 summons to students - three a day for offenses ranging from robbery to riding a bike on the sidewalk. Of the arrests, 68% of the students were black and 25% were Latino. Blacks make up about 29% of the school system’s 1.1 million students and an estimated 37% of summer school students.

Nepomuceno Moreno Nunez, 56, was outspoken in his search for justice in the kidnapping of his son and three others in Sonora. He accused police of accosting the youths and having a hand in their disappearance. He was shot as he crossed a street in Hermosillo, the state capital, authorities said. The Sonora state attorney general's office did not say whether Moreno Nunez's killing was related to his work as an activist, but did say that he had been imprisoned previously for possessing a weapon exclusively for military use. The attorney general's office said that Moreno Nunez was involved in an armed incursion of a home in 2005. According to the Mexico City daily Reforma, however, the authorities failed to mention that he was released from prison after being absolved. The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity called on Sonoran authorities to investigate the killings thoroughly and to provide protection to Moreno Nunez's family as needed.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, and one of the few that hasn't bowed to western pressure to drop legislation that curbs gay rights. The bill, which makes same-sex marriage punishable by a 14-year jail term, still has to be ratified by the country's lower house before being signed off by the president, Goodluck Jonathan. It also seeks to tighten existing legislation, which already outlaws gay sex, by criminalizing anyone who witnesses or assists such marriages and making same-sex public displays of affection a jailable offense. Under the new law, groups that support gay rights would also be banned. During the debate in the capital, Abuja, one senator described homosexuality as a mental illness to cheers of approval. Another senator said that such elements in Nigerian society should be killed. Many in Nigeria see the bill as a way for the government to score easy political points in a deeply religious society which is largely intolerant of homosexuality. Only 1.4% of Nigerians felt tolerant towards sexual minorities, according to a 2008 survey by Nigeria's Information for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Few dare to stand up for gay rights in the Muslim-majority north, where homosexual acts can incur sentences of death by stoning. Much anti-gay rights sentiment is rooted in perceived suspicion that it is a foreign import being foisted on Nigerian by interfering outsiders. While threats from western governments to cut off aid amid growing anti-gay sentiment in the continent has forced other African countries to scrap proposed anti-gay laws, it's had the opposite effect in Nigeria, whose treasury is awash with dollars from its 2 million barrels-a-day oil industry. The new laws will have repercussions well beyond the gay community, said Damian Ugwu, an activist with the Lagos-based Social Justice Advocacy Initiative. Migrants who shared accommodation for economic reasons would be particularly vulnerable, he said. "From what I know of the Nigerian police, they look for every opportunity to extort money. With this bill, they won't go looking for gay couples in the Sheraton – they'll go just go around rounding up people who are poor or don't know their rights," he said. In the north, policemen had visited hotels at night to seek out unmarried couples sleeping together. They demanded bribes or threatened to turn them in to the Islamic courts, Ugwu said.

Denzel Cassius Harvey was fined £50 at Thames Youth Court in March 2010 after being convicted of a public order offense - namely swearing at police officers - when he was stopped and searched for cannabis. He repeatedly swore at police and was arrested and fined £50 by the court after being found guilty under section five of the Public Order Act 1986. He was convicted of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby. The 20-year-old, however, challenged the ruling in a case which cost the public an estimated £30,000 and Mr Justice Bean has upheld the appeal in the High Court saying that swear words were now so common they no longer cause distress. But, it can now be revealed that Harvey has been in jail since April 2011, when he was convicted of a knife-point robbery at Snaresbrook Crown Court. The black thug was jailed for 20 months and sent to a young offenders institution on April 19, 2011. Harvey was also given a four month consecutive sentence for breach of bail relating to possession of a knife in May 2010.

Black criminal Andre James convinced judges that deporting him to Jamaica would make him more likely to re-offend - even though the Home Secretary wanted him removed from Britain after he was jailed for five years in 2007 for possessing a revolver and ammunition, supplying Class A drugs, carrying a blade in public and being in possession of criminal property. He was also allowed to stay on the grounds that his human right to a family life would be infringed by being forcibly returned, because he has two children in Britain. One of them was fathered while he appealed against his deportation. The case highlights growing concerns over the use of human rights legislation by foreign criminals to frustrate legislation which makes clear that anyone serving more than a year in prison should be automatically deported. Coalition ministers have launched a review of the way the crucial element of the law, the controversial Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights - which guarantees a right to a private and family life - is being used. Ministers are also planning to rein in judges' human rights rulings, which Britain's most senior judiciary have admitted go further than the European Court in Strasbourg. MPs may be asked to back a powerful statement in the Commons in a bid to deter judges from gold-plating the human rights of criminals and immigration offenders by going far further than the legislation actually requires. In the latest judges upheld both parts of James's claim to stay in Britain - both his human rights claim, and his assertion that returning to Jamaica would increase the chance of recidivism, because of its criminal atmosphere. In their ruling upper immigration tribunal judge Peter King and deputy David Garratt said in their ruling: "We consider that returning him to Jamaica would expose him to the various temptations to which he has succumbed in this country, to the detriment of the welfare of society as a whole or to the appellant in particular. It is clear that drugs and the drugs trade is a significant feature of life in Jamaica and it may well be that, in commonsense, were the appellant to find difficulty in obtaining lawful employment upon return he would revert to a life of criminality. We assess, therefore, that the risk of his offending or re-offending is much greater were he to be returned to Jamaica, than it would be were he to be allowed to have the stability and support of his family and to obtain work." James, now 28, arrived in Britain in 1999, aged 16, on a visitor's visa. The Jamaican was granted indefinite leave to remain the following year because his father and stepmother were already settled here. According to the immigration courts, James took part in buying and selling cocaine for a prolonged period between 2004 - when he became a father for the first time with girlfriend Victoria McLean - and 2006, when he was arrested. Pleading guilty early the following year, he was give a mandatory minimum five year sentence under measures introduced by the previous Labor government to combat gun crime and released on license in the summer of 2009, by which time he knew that the Home Office was trying to deport him. Between losing his first appeal and winning on the second attempt James fathered a second child with McLean, born in January 2011. Having another child strengthened his family attachments in Britain and boosted his arguments against deportation. James has rarely had a job since his conviction and had turned down job offers since coming out of prison. James, who lives in Cinderhill, Nottingham, said: "I like it here - England is not like Jamaica. It's a very different country. Criminality is an everyday thing over there. I couldn't get a job over there as there's no work so I might fall back into committing crimes." McLean is the breadwinner and works as a customer service agent for an insurance firm, the court heard. James failed to pass a plumbing course in 2009. Dominic Raab MP, who is campaigning to reform Article 8, said: "It is bad enough that a man convicted of carrying a revolver and a blade cannot be deported on inflated human rights grounds, but it is astonishing that the judge was influenced by his assessment that the offender was more likely to re-offend if returned to Jamaica."

The indictment of 23-year-old African-American Shanee Liggins of Waldorf has been announced. An Allegany County grand jury issued the indictment charging her with murdering 19-year-old Kortneigh McCoy of Baltimore outside an off-campus party. Liggins has been in custody since then. She told police that someone else stabbed McCoy. Liggins has retained private defense attorneys William Brennan and William Mitchell of Greenbelt. They defended Frostburg State student Tyrone Hall against murder and attempted-murder charges. He's serving five years for manslaughter.

Lupita Gonzalez of Florida was found after a intensive search involving helicopters and bloodhound tracking dogs. Dozens of police with a Child Abduction Response Team combed a farmland and wooden areas while boats were deployed to several lakes in the area. Amazingly, the toddler was discovered under a bush more than two miles from where she he had been snatched by 23-year-old Carlos Rivera. Police said that she was alone for 12 hours before being discovered. Her mother had failed to report her missing as she worried the girl's father would find out about her having sex with another man. Rivera told police that he had grabbed the toddler because he was upset that he was interrupted while having sex with her mother Leah Wiley. He told investigators that he had paid 30-year-old Wiley for sex but it ended when she was called away to another room at a party held in rural Seville, Florida. Carlos Rivera, 23, was upset that he was interrupted while having sex with Leah Wiley, 30, whom he had paid. Rivera said that he snatched the toddler and left the party, but later worried about his actions and abandoned the girl in woodland. He called 911 to report the girl missing, but did not give police any firm details. Wiley told authorities that she suspected Rivera had taken the child but did not report her missing because she didn't want the child's father to find out that she had sex with Rivera. After being arrested Rivera initially told authorities that he remembered a little girl was at the party held in Seville but didn't know what happened to her. Later during questioning he gave police a vague description of the area where he abandoned her. Volusia County Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said Rivera told investigators that he had paid Wiley to have sex with her. Rivera was charged with child abuse and kidnapping. He is also being held on charges out of Putnam County for failure to appear on charges of grand theft auto, driving under the influence with property damage and driving without a valid driver's license, according to court records. He is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail without bail. Wiley was charged with one count of an act that could result in the physical/mental injury of a child. The Florida Department of Children and Families has taken custody of the child and Wiley's two other children.

The father and his sons locked the girl in a room in their home, where they killed her after repeatedly shooting at her. They had plotted the killing for several weeks. “I fired a shot at her but it missed and the firearm got jammed,” said one of the brothers named as Javed. “Then my father shot her twice, one over her jaw and the other one at her right temple area. But she survived, bled profusely, but remained quiet." Javed said. After this, her father shot her twice again at point-blank range and she died on the spot, police said. Honor killings - when a person is murdered by a family member out of belief that the victim has brought shame on the family, clan or community - are common in parts of South Asia, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and some regions of India. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are victims of honor killings every year.

Three women are to go on trial in the capital, Harare, over the allegations which have shocked the country. One victim, who wished to remain anonymous, gave an account on national television in July 2011 of his experience which happened after he was offered a lift by a group of three women in Harare. "One of the women threw water in my face and they injected me with something that gave me a strong sexual desire," he said. "They stopped the car and made me have sex with each of them several times, using condoms. When they had finished they left me in the bush totally naked. Some people gathering grass helped me by calling the police, who took me to hospital to deal with the effects of this drug that I had been given, as the urge to have sex was still there." The women due in court have been charged on 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault - as Zimbabwean law does not recognise the act of a woman raping a man. They were detained in the central town of Gweru, 170 miles south-west of Harare, after officers found 31 used condoms in the car that they were travelling in. The women deny the charges, saying they are prostitutes and were too busy at the time to dispose of the condoms. After being released on bail, they were confronted and threatened by a crowd. They say that they have been forced to remain at home since then, to avoid unwanted attention. Police spokesperson Superintendent Andrew Phiri said that they believe that there is a syndicate operating nationwide. "We have received reports from around the country from different towns and provinces, it's been happening on the highways," he said. "We are yet to find out the real reason why this is happening. We have heard speculation that it's linked to rituals." The semen is believed to be used in rituals to bring success in business, and there are suggestions that the semen is being taken outside the country for sale. But cultural expert and sociology lecturer Claude Mararikei said that it was not clear how the semen would be used. "It's in the area of rituals and magic, which border on secret societies," he said. "Even researchers don't want to go into that area because you may not come out alive to publish whatever you find out."

Monday, November 28, 2011

But the 25-year-old young mother’s parents remained inconsolable as they described how the killer, 22-year-old Jesus Alejandro, left them broken-hearted. Alejandro stabbed the victim 26 times. Alejandro, of the Bronx, was just 18 when he set upon Christina Hernandez in her Harlem apartment. He later claimed that he did it to stop her from posting a video of him on YouTube. Prosecutors said that there never was a video and described in graphic detail his attack. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sigall said that Alejandro stabbed her repeatedly, slit her throat, dragged her body to the oven — which he opened and turned on before trying to flee. Alejandro’s defense had argued that Hernandez and her roommate made fun of him and hid cameras in the walls to make a video they planned to post on the Internet site — something officials said was not true. Alejandro's violence has continued behind bars with an attack on a female correction officer.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. Of course, many of those "voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment" are Jewish. This means that the base of the Democratic party is becoming increasingly dominated by Jews, blacks and Latinos as it grows ever more hostile to white gentiles of all social classes. Jewish Democrats such as Stanley Greenberg advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites (such as the Jews) in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics. It should be obvious that the Jews see it as being in their own interests to replace the white gentile population of our country with Latinos. The question is will white gentiles sit back and allow this to happen or will they stand up for themselves and the traditional United States of America? Update: Steve Sailer asks whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?

Dressed in drag, Brandon Arnold, 24, and roommate Michael Burns, 21, mugged a teenage girl in Lincoln Park Zoo. This occurred moments after they assaulted another pedestrian and tried to pilfer his wallet, prosecutors said. The pair arrived at Cook County Central Bond Court in Chicago, donning styled hair and gray leggings, to be charged with robbery and attempted armed robbery.

The Philippine Criminal Investigation and Detection Group said that it worked with the FBI to arrest the suspects. The hackers, according to investigators, worked for a group that helped finance a deadly 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. The hackers were working on commission for a terrorist group linked to Muhammad Zamir, according to the Philippine police. Zamir, a Pakistani, was arrested in Italy in 2007, where he was running a call center that collected money from callers but then routed the calls through hacked phone lines. He also sold international access codes for long distance calls that were gathered by Filipino hackers. Since then, police said, Zamir's group has been taken over by a Saudi national. Philippine police didn't name the group, but India has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for the Mumbai attacks. Several years ago, 10 Pakistan-based gunmen laid siege to India's financial hub, killing 166 people.

Professors at University College London have expressed concern over the increasing number of biology students boycotting lectures on Darwinist theory, which form an important part of the syllabus, citing their religion. Muslim opponents to Darwinism maintain that Allah created the world, mankind and all known species in a single act. Recently Usama Hasan, iman of the Masjid al-Tawhid mosque in Leyton, received death threats for suggesting that Darwinism and Islam might be compatible. Turkish author Harun Yahya has written several books denouncing Darwinist theory. Yahya associates Dawinism with Nazism and his books and videos are available at many Islamic bookshops in Britain and regularly featured on Islamic television channels. Islamic speakers regularly tour Britain lecturing on Yahya's beliefs. One such lecture was given at UCL in 2008 and in 2011 talks have been given in London, Manchester, Leeds, Dundee and Glasgow. Evolutionary biologist and former Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins has expressed his concern at the number of students, consisting almost entirely of Muslims, who do not attend or walk out of lectures.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Sexual abuse survivors and their advocates have long harried Hynes for overlooking molesters in the borough’s tight-knit, ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. They charge that Hynes fears political retaliation from the borough’s powerful rabbinic leaders and their bloc-voting Orthodox Jewish voters. Unfortunately, Hynes has a long history of pandering to ethnic and racial minorities - such as the Jews - so it is unlikely that he will do anything to alienate the powerful rabbis who control much of the Jewish vote in parts of New York City.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

African-American Arthur Morgan III remained at large despite a dragnet involving 13 law enforcement agencies including the FBI. Authorities believe that the 27-year-old Morgan, of Ocean Township, may have left the state. The victim, Tierra Morgan-Glover, lived in Lakehurst with her mother and was having a court-approved visit with her father, but he never took her back. The girl's body was discovered in Wall Township, about 20 miles north of where she lived. The toddler was discovered by children playing in Shark River Park, said Christopher Gramiccioni, a spokesman for the Monmouth County prosecutor's office. The children notified park rangers, who called police. A 911 call was received by police saying that student-aged children came across what they were concerned was a child in the creek, Gramiccioni said. Police found the girl's body, still strapped in the car seat, partly submerged in the creek, a tributary of the nearby Shark River. The creek is 3 to 7 feet deep in the area where the body was found, near a roadway overpass about 15 feet above the creek. An autopsy conducted by the county medical examiner's office determined the cause of death as homicidal violence, including submersion in water. A warrant from Ocean County charging Morgan with child endangerment and interference with custody had been issued before the girl's body was found. His last permanent address was at an apartment in Eatontown, but Morgan had been staying on and off with a friend in Ocean Township, just outside Asbury Park, the prosecutor added.

County Police say that the tow truck's drivers found Ronnell Sims sitting on the back of their truck in the Riverview Place apartment complex in Claymont, and when they told him to get off the truck, he refused, eventually grabbing a red light from the top of the truck and running toward Governor Printz Boulevard. The light was still attached to the truck by a cord, and fell out of Sims' pocket as he ran. Sims was back on the truck a short time later, and attacked one of the drivers, demanding the keys to the truck. The drivers held Sims till police arrived, and he was arrested after giving a false name and struggling with the officers. Sims is being held at the Hoard Young Prison on charges of attempted carjacking, attempting theft, resisting arrest, offensive touching and criminal impersonation.

Eder Rodriguez-Guzman, 29, is being held without bond in the New River Valley Regional Jail. Neighbors identified the slain 2-year-old girl as Rodriguez-Guzman's daughter Jocelyn. Rodriguez-Guzman was from Mexico and had lived in Longview Court for about a year and a half. He worked at a Christmas tree farm and his wife at a restaurant in Blacksburg. Virginia law allows capital murder charges in a number of situations, including when a victim is younger than 14 and the suspect older than 20. Rodriguez-Guzman also was charged with assault and battery of a member of his household. The sheriff's office did not say if the assault victim was the toddler or someone else.

According to an arrest affidavit, 20-year-old Kwaku Agyin is charged with the shooting death of 35-year-old Marcus Anderson. Anderson was shot and killed at the Skyline Motel on the Northeast Side. The affidavit stated that Agyin forced a woman to call Anderson to her hotel room where the shooting took place. The woman told police that she was a prostitute for Agyin, but had recently ended her relationship with him because he had assaulted her, the affidavit stated. The woman said that Anderson was helping her find an apartment and holding money for her, the affidavit stated. Agyin confronted the woman about the money and when she did not give him any, the affidavit stated that he took her at gunpoint and forced her to call Anderson and lure him to her motel room. According to the affidavit, Agyin hid in the closet while the woman and another man with a gun waited for Anderson to arrive. Anderson arrived and the other man in the room attempted to rob Anderson, but the two got into a fight. The affidavit stated Agyin then came out of the closet and shot Anderson multiple times. Anderson stumbled out of the room and Agyin fled with the other man. The woman contacted a friend who contacted police. Police found the woman involved and interviewed her. Police learned of her relationship with Agyin and also determined that she was a minor. Agyin was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a minor, harboring a runaway child, trafficking and compelling prostitution. Through a series of interviews with witnesses, detectives determined that Agyin was also connected to Anderson's slaying and issued another warrant for his arrest.

Police arrested Fredy Alexander Chingo Riz on Thanksgiving Day 2011 for the beating death of 3-year-old Athena Angeles. The Department of Children and Families said that they were in the middle of investigating abuse allegations before the child's death. A spokesperson for DCF said that the family had recently come to their attention after the child received medical attention but the department wasn't aware of the circumstances surrounding that medical intervention. State police began an investigation after the 3-year-old victim was taken from her home to Windham Memorial Hospital in cardiac arrest. She died at the hospital. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that the toddler died of blunt abdominal and chest trauma and ruled the death a homicide, police said. Chingo Riz, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, admitted to police that he had punched the girl in the stomach several times, according to court documents. He told authorities that he had beaten her at least two other times as well. Chingo Riz lived in the home with the 3-year-old victim and her mother. He was charged with manslaughter, risk of injury to a minor and assault. He was held on $1.5 million bond.

White flight has become such a problem in many Norwegian schools that one school decided to segregate its white ethnic Norwegian students so that they would not feel like a minority in their own country. Of course the best way to stop white children from feeling like a minority in their own country would be to limit the number of immigrants.

Scientists identified a gene called ABCC9 that can reduce the length of time we sleep. The same gene has previously been linked to heart disease and diabetes. The discovery could explain why light sleepers, such as Margaret Thatcher, are able to get by on just four hours shut-eye a night. The Europe-wide study saw 4,000 people from seven different EU countries fill out a questionnaire assessing their sleep habits. Scientists then analysed their answers, as well as participants’ genes. They discovered that people who had two copies of one common variant of ABCC9 slept for significantly shorter periods than people with two copies of another version. Apparently the relationships of sleep duration with other conditions such as heart disease and diabetes can be in part explained by an underlying common molecular mechanism.

Stacey Patton is wondering why so few blacks are taking part in the OWS protests when they were more than happy to protest in the past. Of course, those other protests pretty much focused exclusively on the problems of blacks while ignoring the problems of non-blacks. Most blacks are probably put off by the fact that the OWS protests acknowledge that whites have economic problems too.

Mohamed Bouzalim, 37, a Moroccan national, has admitted to dishonestly entering Britain and exploiting the British welfare system. Sentencing him at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Simon Oliver said that Bouzalim has committed fraud on a grand scale over nine years and was unscrupulous and manipulative. Oliver said that he rejected Bouzalim's claim he had been tortured and had a mental illness. Oliver said that Bouzalim claimed to be an Afghani refugee whose father was killed by the Taliban and he was tortured, to gain the sympathies of immigration authorities, and that this lie started the spiral of deceit. Crown Prosecutor Lyall Thompson had told the court that Bouzalim had sat in his bed shaking and pretending to be unable to walk when a social services worker from Camden Council visited, but soon after the assessor left, police witnessed him walking out of the house. Thompson said that a video of Bouzalim dancing at his wedding and the fact that he passed a driving test in an unadapted car was proof of his disability being a hoax. He said that Bouzalim also duped three British universities into believing that he was a Belgian national so he was eligible for discounted fees given to European Union citizens. Bouzalim's siblings, Rachid, 35, Abdallah, 39, and Zahra, 41, were given 12-month suspended sentences for assisting him.

Glasgow-based Saif Rehman, 31, and Uzma Naurin, 30, from New York, were shot dead on a trip to Pakistan, when their car was ambushed in the north-eastern city of Gujrat. Police in the country say that Naurin’s taxi driver father, 58-year-old Muzaffar Hussain, is being viewed as a chief suspect in the shootings. Hussain, from New Jersey, was in Pakistan at the time of the killing but has now returned to his U.S. home. A group of four gunmen stopped the car carrying Rehman and his wife on November 1, 2011 before killing them. The couple had been about to start a new life together in the United States after their trip to Pakistan for Rehman’s brother’s wedding. They had been married in Manchester, England but another, fuller ceremony involving both sides of the family took place in Glasgow in June 2011. The driver of the car in which Rehman and his wife were travelling was uninjured in the attack and is said to have been an associate of Hussain’s. Named only as ‘Adeel’, he is currently in police custody. The couple were accompanied in the car by Rehman’s sister and her two-year-old daughter, who were also unharmed. Detectives in Pakistan are probing claims that the couple’s marriage had caused upset among some members of Naurin’s family. Police sources in Gujrat said that they had been told she had been married previously to another man in England. A friend of hers in Scotland said that the marriage had been approved by her family – but her first husband, who has not yet been identified, is said to have killed himself. She was later told to marry the dead man’s brother in another arranged match but refused to do so as he was too young. Pakistani police spokesman Nasir Butt said that the deaths were being treated as an honor killing and that Hussain was the chief suspect.

Zainab Bibi, 32, was arrested in connection with the murder of her husband Ahmad Abbas, police said. Her 22-year-old nephew, Zaheer Ahmed, is accused of helping Bibi stab Abbas to death and carve his body into small pieces. Police said that she wanted to cook her husband's body parts so she could dispose of them without being caught. Neighbors raised the alert when they detected a foul odor in the neighborhood, police said. Bibi is being held in a police station in the southern city of Karachi. She claimed to have killed her husband because he wanted a physical relationship with their daughter - and said that she did not regret her actions. "I killed my husband before he dared to touch my daughter," she said.

Majid Movahedi, who was minutes away from having acid dropped in his own eyes when Bahrami spared him, has had his sentence commuted to 10 years in prison and is no longer required to pay compensation to his victim. Bahrami says that she needs the money for plastic surgery, and she felt cheated when authorities told her that the pardon meant she would no longer receive compensation. "Even though I agreed to pardon Mr Movahedi, I didn't think I was surrendering my right to compensation," she says. "If Majid Movahedi walks out of prison without paying the compensation money for my eyes, it means I have been subjected to injustice."

African-American Aaron Thomas was arrested in March 2011 in his hometown of New Haven, and authorities say DNA confirmed that he is responsible for rapes and other attacks on 17 women from Virginia to Connecticut over the span of a decade. New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington wouldn't discuss why Connecticut had decided to extradite Thomas, who is planning to challenge the move to another jurisdiction. Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert said that he petitioned to have Thomas returned to Virginia, where he faces potential life sentences, as soon as possible. The first assault that authorities say they connected to Thomas was in 1997 in Forestville, Md., when a man pulled a gun on a woman and forced her into the woods, then fled on a bicycle. Seven months later, a woman was raped behind a restaurant garbage bin in Maryland. The following year, a 16-year-old girl was raped, also in Maryland. Authorities said that the same man then started attacking women in Virginia, until two victims were raped in the same attack in Maryland in 2001. Police said that the suspect resurfaced in 2006 in New England, peeping on a girl doing her homework in Rhode Island before her screams scared him off. Two teenage trick-or-treaters were raped in 2009 in Woodbridge, Va. Authorities had mounted a large-scale public outreach campaign, putting up electronic billboards in the states where the attacks occurred and in neighboring states. DNA from a cigarette that police saw Thomas discard after leaving a New Haven court was used to confirm that Thomas was the man wanted in the attacks, a prosecutor has said.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

No other major immigrant group has a dropout rate higher than 20%, and the overall rate for the city is less than 9 percent, the statistics show. This crisis endures at the college level. Among Mexican immigrants 19 to 23 who do not have a college degree, only 6% are enrolled. That is a fraction of the rates among other major immigrant groups and the native-born population. The problem is especially unsettling because Mexicans are the fastest-growing major immigrant group in the city, officially numbering about 183,200, according to the Census Bureau, up from about 33,600 in 1990. Experts say the actual figure is far larger, given high levels of illegal immigration. Many Mexicans are poor and in the country illegally. While educational achievement is far higher among American-born children with Mexican ancestry, it still lags behind the rates of most other foreign-born and native-born groups, according to census data.

All the victims were men, said Ulises Enríquez, a spokesman for the Jalisco delegation of the Attorney General's Office. The vehicles were discovered near a monument on one of the city's main avenues. Jalisco state Attorney General Tomas Coronado Olmos said that a message was found with the bodies, but he did not disclose what it said. Jalisco Gov. Emilio Gonzalez, a former mayor of Guadalajara, said that he was appalled and outraged by the discovery, which came a day after authorities in Sinaloa state found 16 charred bodies inside two trucks that had been set ablaze.

African-American Andre Davis, 29, of Hyde Park, Cincinnati, faces 120 years in jail after being convicted on 14 counts of felonious assault. He also faces additional charges in two other Ohio counties. The court heard how Davis had sex with more than a dozen women who were completely unaware that he was infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. They only found out after one victim, the mother of his two children, discovered his testing paperwork and informed the others. Davis applied to work with the World Wrestling Entertainment WWE organization in 2009 but they rejected him after he failed a physical by testing positive for HIV. Under Ohio law people who know that they are infected with HIV are required to inform potential sexual partner.

“There is so much tension in every community… there are a lot of splits over immigration,” said Davis, who quit politics in 2010 after trying to win the Democratic nomination for governor in his home state of Alabama. For eight years, he represented the state’s 7th Congressional District, which was designed to include an African-American majority. Some progressive African-American representatives, such as Georgia’s John Lewis, publicly ally with Hispanic ethnic advocates, such as Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, to champion cultural diversity and acceptance of illegal immigrants. They’re supported by administration officials, including top leaders at Department of Justice who have sued four states to halt new reforms that are intended to curb employers’ use of low-wage illegal immigrants. On November 28, 2011, for example, Tom Perez, who heads the department’s civil litigation division, will hold a limited-access press conference in Alabama to rally progressives’ opposition to the state’s popular and bipartisan reform law. The progressives’ diversity caucus gets a lot of favorable press, but most members of the Congressional Black Caucus keep a low profile on the issue. That’s because many of their African-American constituents oppose immigration and resent Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal. The resentment is focused on the perceived loss of jobs in construction, food-service and building-maintenance, and to the increased difficulties that young African-Americans face when seeking employment in workplaces where most of the employees speak Spanish. Less that half of 20-something African-American males are employed full-time, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Setting himself far apart from his Republican colleagues, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul has suggested that the U.S. should have less involvement in Israel's affairs. "I think they're quite capable of taking care of themselves," he said. The statement came in response to a question in a debate about whether the GOP candidates would, as president, support Israel in an attack against Iran. Paul responded that he wouldn't expect such an attack to take place - but if it were to, "Why does Israel need our help? We need to get out of their way." The United States sends roughly $3 billion to Israel in military assistance every year. If they were to conduct such an attack, "that's their business, but they should suffer the consequences," Paul continued. He added that Israel has hundreds of nuclear missiles, so "they can take care of themselves."

The Latino illegitimacy rate still grew from 53.2% to 53.3%. The non-Hispanic white illegitimacy rate was stable at 29.0%, while the black rate fell from 72.8% to 72.5% and the Asian rate from 17.2% to 17.0%.

The Minnesota Readiness Study finds children of color and children who live in poverty are less likely to be considered ready for kindergarten than white students and those living above the poverty line. According to the study, 60% of all students were considered proficient, meaning that they had enough skills to enter kindergarten. But only 44% of Hispanic children were considered ready for kindergarten, compared to 63% of white children. The study measured 5,600 Minnesota students during their first eight weeks of kindergarten in several areas, including physical development, language and mathematical thinking. Among the results, 63% of white students were considered ready for kindergarten, compared to 44% of Hispanic students, 44% of American Indian students, and 57% of black students. In addition, 52% of students who live below the federal poverty line were proficient, compared to 69% of students who live above the poverty line.

The citizens of DR Congo pray to be delivered from the brutal militias that still control parts of the eastern provinces, where rape has become so commonplace that one senior UN official called the country the rape capital of the world. The prestigious Foreign Policy magazine's Failed States Index puts DR Congo in the critically failed category. Only Somalia, Chad and Sudan (when it included South Sudan) have worse rankings and, like DR Congo, they are all African nations. The recently released UNDP report on human development indicators put the former Belgian colony at the bottom of the 187 countries it surveyed. Many wish for the Belgians to return to solve the country's problems.

Josue Cruz-Ayala, 19, of Lawrenceville is in the Gwinnett County Jail on several charges stemming from a road rage incident on Nov. 13, 2011. Cruz-Ayala, driving a black Ford Explorer, is accused of pulling up behind a motorist and flashing police-like lights to get the motorist, identified as Jason Milczek of Lilburn, to pull over. Milczek refused to stop because he was suspicious of the vehicle behind him but eventually ran out of gas, police say. Cruz-Ayala, who was tailgating Milczek for several minutes, pulled up beside him and threw an empty bottle at his car. Milczek, who was able to get the Explorer’s tag number, had already called for police assistance, but Cruz-Ayala had left the scene when they arrived. Police said that they were able to identify Cruz-Ayala as the driver during a traffic stop eight days later, on Nov. 21, 2011 when he was stopped for his window tint and an unsafe lane change.

The biggest change comes among white Democrats with no college education, a group typically considered the core of the party's blue-collar constituency. Half of all white Democrats with no college education say that they don't want Obama heading their party's ticket in 2012.

Sabir Hussain admitted four charges of assault after the attacks were secretly filmed for a TV program. The 60-year-old said that they were not gratuitous but chastisement, which he accepted had gone too far. Hussain, who was wearing traditional dress, lodged an immediate appeal but was denied bail and taken from the court in handcuffs. The sentencing hearing was told that the assaults, which involved four boys, happened at the Markazi Jamia mosque, where Hussain taught after retiring from the textile industry. Footage was shown on a TV documentary, leading to a police inquiry. Clips from the program, screened in court, showed Hussain walking up behind a line of boys sitting at prayer tables and kicking one in the back. Other footage showed him kicking other boys and slapping one repeatedly. The TV program also exposed what the Department for Education called a culture of intolerance at the Darul Uloom Islamic high school in Birmingham. The school's headteacher has since been replaced and a number of teachers dismissed.

Due to the shortage of compatible donors, South Asian and black patients on average have to wait nearly twice as long as a white person for an organ to become available. Apparently, just like in the United States, most organ donors in Britain are white.

Overall, voters oppose the law by 48%-40%, according to the Quinnipiac University survey. Democrats support the Obama health care effort by 70%-19%, while Republicans oppose it by 86%-8%. The Quinnipiac survey found independent voters opposed to the law by 45%-38%. In addition, only 44% of registered voters approve of Obama's performance, while half of the country disapproves of his performance, according to the survey. His job-approval rating is only at 42% among independents. White voters continue to view Obama negatively - just 37 % back the job he has done as president, the poll found, including only 34% of blue-collar whites. The numbers are better among whites with a college degree - 42% support Obama - but that's still a notable drop-off from the support he received in 2008. Then, 47% of whites with a college degree voted for Obama, according to exit polling.

A judge sentenced Israel Diaz to 59 consecutive years behind bars. In 2008, Diaz was arrested on a burglary charge. Under Katie's Law, a DNA sample was taken, linking him to the rape and murder of Victoria Sandoval.

Melecio C. Hernandez, 32, was sentenced in Chesterfield County General District Court to serve four months in jail after a judge convicted him of misdemeanor sexual battery and unlawful entry, reduced from aggravated sexual battery and breaking and entering, both felonies. In addition, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have placed a detainer on Hernandez pending a deportation hearing. "So we anticipate that he will no longer be residing in this country," said Chesterfield prosecutor Suzanne Bielaski. According to evidence, Hernandez, who lived across the street from the victim, invited himself to a party hosted by the woman and her two roommates. They recognized him as a neighbor and didn't object to him attending, police said. Hernandez became intoxicated and at some point left the party. The victim went to sleep on a couch after the party ended and, at 2:45 a.m., she awoke to a man trying to lie on top of her. He had climbed through an unlocked window. The intruder, whom the woman identified as Hernandez, began to fondle her sexually and she resisted physically and verbally, prompting him to leave, Bielaski said. He was arrested about 90 minutes later.

The prosecutor said that she would, for now, remain in jail - with her child - for not reporting her attack fast enough. In a remarkable case that is all too common in Afghanistan but has drawn international attention, 21-year-old Gulnaz was attacked by a relative two years ago, but sentenced to 12 years in jail for adultery. She has since given birth to a girl from the attack. Because of the dishonor of sex outside of wedlock, she had been given the choice of marrying her attacker to get out of jail and legitimize her infant daughter in the eyes of Afghanistan's Islamic society. The child is imprisoned with her at Badambagh Prison on the outskirts of Kabul. Gulnaz says that she at first tried to hide the attack against her because she could be killed for bringing shame on her community. Only her pregnancy exposed the attack and began criminal investigations that led to her conviction for adultery. A spokesman for the Afghan attorney general said that her sentence had been reduced by another court hearing to three years and that the main remaining charge against her was not reporting her attack early enough.

With white voters in Pennsylvania, Obama has a 36% approval rating with 59% disapproving, these are the sort of numbers that we are more used to seeing in the South than in the Northeast. He's also at a much lower than normal 69% approval rating with Democrats in the state while only 45% of Pennsylvania independents approve of him with 53% disapproving. In addition, only 9% of GOP voters in the state give him good marks. Obama and Romney are tied at 45% each but if you dig in on the undecided voters only 24% of them approve of Obama's job performance to 70% who disapprove.

Steve Sailer points out that the current decline in illegal immigration that appears to have begun with the popping of the subprime bubble in 2007 is significantly lowering overall Hispanic fertility. Without significant immigration restrictions, however, Latino fertility will boom again the next time the economy does well because so many of the births are concentrated among recent illegal immigrants from Latin America.

The resulting controversy has one East Texas lawmaker wanting changes in the state's curriculum on how culture and patriotism are taught in schools. 15-year-old Brenda Brinsdon entered her sophomore year at McAllen ISD's Achieve Early College High School just wanting to do well in her classes. But in mid-September 2011 she got an unexpected lesson on personal conviction and taking on the system. Brinsdon stood her ground by staying seated when first-year Spanish 3 teacher Reyna Santos assigned her class to stand and recite Mexico's pledge of allegiance. Students stood with right arms straight out and palms down, which is how the school district says that Mexicans say their pledge. Calling the lesson un-American, Brinsdon recorded the class, which occurred the week of Mexico's Independence Day and also the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The teacher also told students to memorize and recite the the pledge individually. And when the time came for the part of the assignment to sing Mexico's national anthem, Brinsdon again refused. With that, Santos asked the class to stand and led the class in the anthem. Brinsdon's father, William, backs his daughter. He points out that reciting a pledge to any other nation has no place in U.S. public schools. The controversy got the attention of Republican State Representative Dan Flynn of Canton. "It was a shock to me," he said. The Texas Education Agency says that the state curriculum outlines what must be taught, but local districts decide how it's taught. Flynn said that since the state allows that much discretion, he'll file a bill again to require more mandatory studies on the U.S. Constitution. "I do have a problem if we're making that the assignment for young people to stand up and pledge to another country," Flynn said. "It lessens the value of the pledge to the United States flag." Brinsdon has been pulled from Santos' class and gets her lessons separately now. Despite the controversy, she has no regrets. "I really hope that I was an inspiration to a lot of youth in America to stand up for what's right," Brinsdon said.

Andre Lake, 27, who was given the second chance at the government department, used his pass to sneak into his co-workers' offices and steal a wallet and two BlackBerry phones. He also broke into a store cupboard and stole eight more BlackBerrys, worth £125 each. Nine days later he was fired and arrested for staging a bomb hoax so he could get the day off work. Lake, who at the time was serving a suspended sentence for burglary, was given an 18-month community order with supervision and 200 hours of unpaid work for the bomb scare in November 2010. The administration officer in the Youth Justice Office had been employed through the offenders rehabilitation project on June 14, 2010. He first used his pass to sneak into his co-workers' office and stole a wallet containing bank cards, driving license, and a season ticket. A few days later he went into a technician's office and stole the two mobiles that were lying on his desk. Then, he made his way into the store cupboard and took eight BlackBerrys belonging to the Ministry of Justice. But managers were able to trace him as the culprit on all occasions as he used his personal pass to swipe his way into the crime scene. Lake of Harrow, North London, pleaded guilty to the three charges of thefts. It was his security pass which also identified him as the hoax bomb caller. Lake made two calls to the police from the office, one claiming that there was a bomb and the second posing as the building's head of security and demanding to know where the emergency services were so he could go home early. In August 2009 Lake was given a nine-month sentence suspended for two years after he was convicted of kicking down the door of a residential property and ransacking it for valuables alongside an accomplice. The father-to-be was caught leaving the house with a stolen watch and marigold gloves to cover his fingerprints in his pocket but was given a chance by the MoJ. Three months of the suspended sentence was activated and Lake was given six-month concurrently for the thefts.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that there is only one option for Barack Obama in the wake of the supercommitte’s failure: Announce he will veto any extension of the Bush-era tax cuts. “All the president has to do — and I’m not trying to hold him more responsible, but he is the chief executive, he was elected to lead this country — all he’s got to do is stand up and say, ‘I will veto any extension of any of the Bush-era tax cuts’,” Bloomberg said. “Everybody. Not just the rich, but everybody.” Bloomberg said that if Obama follows his advice, it would not only solve the country’s problem — it would also be the black Democrat's ticket to re-election.

Against Mitt Romney, Obama performs similarly among black voters. Ninety-two percent of African Americans would support Obama, versus just six percent for Romney. According to the 2008 exit polls, Obama got 95% of the African American vote. Even with sliding poll numbers, Herman Cain has attracted large crowds at recent events — but supporters attending Cain rallies are overwhelmingly white.

All the black people want to fight the Mexicans and all the Mexicans want to fight the black people, according to one student at the school. The students have almost segregated into their different racial groups and there are rumors that a large racial fight will take place.

It will publish a National Action Plan designed to make the issue a top priority for every local authority. The news comes amid a devastating report into the failures of police and care agencies to protect teenage girls who have been groomed, raped and sold by male gangs, most of whom are Asian and usually of Pakistani origin. This pattern of abuse at the hands of male Asian gangs has been highlighted before, but never formally acknowledged. In January 2011, the Asian ringleaders of a gang in Derby, who brought a reign of terror to a city’s streets, targeting and grooming young girls for horrific sexual abuse, were jailed. Abid Saddique and Mohammed Liaqat were told that they would serve a minimum of 11 years and 8 years respectively before they could be considered for release.

Oneal Ron Morris, 30, was arrested for practicing medicine without a licence with serious bodily injury after a patient complained that the transgendered black woman pumped cement and Fix-a-Flat tire sealant into her backside. The treatment left the victim with life threatening injuries and she needed several surgeries and round-the-clock care. Police say that Morris is a man but appears to be a woman and her arrest photographs show an apparently enhanced rear. Detectives say that she performed the potentially lethal treatment on herself. Jennifer Hirst, deputy press secretary of the Florida Department of Health said that other possible victims have come forward as a result of the media attention. They are claiming that Morris performed similar procedures on them and that they suffered severe complications. Hirst said that additional arrests in the case are possible. She didn’t offer any more details about the new victims. Morris is now free on bond but the probe by the Miami Gardens Police and health officials is continuing. According to the arrest report, the patient went to Morris’s home and paid $700 for six injections in each buttock to improve its shape and cosmetic appearance. She used superglue to seal the incisions. Within hours, the victim began to feel sick and eventually required treatment at several hospitals.

In presidential elections, you have to go back to the landslide Republican victories of 1972 (Richard Nixon versus George McGovern) and 1984 (Ronald Reagan versus Walter Mondale) to get white Republican margins similar to those of 2010. McGovern and Mondale carried just one state each, Massachusetts and Minnesota respectively. Another way of looking at it is this: fully 88.8% of all ballots cast in 2010 for House Republicans were cast by whites, compared to 63.9% for Democrats. This is why the Republicans should stop wasting their time pandering to the Hispanic population. Republicans win elections when they maximize their white voter base.

ICE has placed a detainer on Alfredo Romero Posada, who was living in an apartment in Somerville, according to court records. After local charges are adjudicated, Posada will be turned over to ICE and placed in removal proceedings, an ICE official said. Posada was ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty to three counts of assault with intent to rape and indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older. He faces a dangerousness hearing November 29, 2011 in Somerville District Court, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office has said. Posada was picked out by the victims from a lineup of six men, according to police. Posada told authorities that he is being treated for schizophrenia. Police are investigating whether Posada is involved in other sexual assaults in the area.

The study was carried out by the independent Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the Congress, at the request of McCain, an Arizona Republican who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008. It found that of 77 human-caused borderland wildfires that were investigated by federal officials from 2006 to 2010, 30 identified illegal border crossers as a suspected source of ignition. Investigators found that half of those fires were lit to signal for help, provide warmth or cook food, although no explicit purpose was given for the remaining fires, which it noted occurred in areas known for drug smuggling. McCain, who sparked a furor in June 2011 by suggesting that illegal immigrants were to blame for some of the wildfires raging near the border, welcomed the report's findings. "This independent GAO study again confirms what U.S. Forest Service and local officials in Arizona have long known: that some of the fires along the Arizona-Mexico border are caused by people crossing the border illegally," McCain said in a statement. "The report further found that firefighting activities have sometimes been delayed while waiting for law enforcement escorts as protection from armed smugglers, which could cause fires to grow larger and more damaging," he added. The GAO report estimates that the federal government spent $33 million fighting human-caused fires along the Arizona-Mexico border between 2006 and 2010.

Councillor Darren Scully said that he would no longer represent people of African origin in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland. Scully said that he had made the decision based on the aggressive attitude he experienced when representations were made to him by black African constituents. Scully had been met with aggressiveness and bad manners by black Africans and they would often play the race card when they did not get what they wanted.

Oceane Sluijzer, 13, was beaten by five Moroccan female classmates after a confrontation at a sports center. The attackers also shouted, "Shut up, you dirty Jew, and return to your country" at Sluijzer, who has filed a formal complaint with the Brussels police. Belgium has about 40,000 Jews. In response, the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium, the umbrella organization for Belgian Jewry, issued a statement expressing its hope that the investigation would proceed quickly while also hinting that it might file a civil action.

For gonorrhea, rates for whites are 26 per 100,000. Among Hispanics, rates are about three times that at 63 per 100,000, and among African Americans, the rates are 512 per 100,000. And while overall rates of syphilis have fallen, there are still wide disparities across ethnic groups, with rates ranging from about 2.4 per 100,000 for whites, 5.9 per 100,000 Hispanics and 20 per 100,000 for African Americans.

African Americans saw their unemployment rate hit 14.8% in 2009; 16.0% in 2010; and so far 15.1% as of the end of October 2011. In comparison, the Hispanic American unemployment rate was 12.1% (2009); 12.5% (2010); and 11.4% as of the end of October 2011. Even when the economy was doing well, blacks still had a higher unemployment rate. For African Americans, unemployment was 10.0% (2005); 8.9%(2006); and 8.3% (2007), while for Hispanics the unemployment rate was 6.0% in 2005; 5.2% in 2006; and 5.6% in 2007.

A long-distance runner who spent more than two days in freezing temperatures without winter gear has had both his feet amputated. Marko Cheseto, 28, is one of several Kenyan runners who competed for the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) in cross-country and track. He was seen in a UAA building on the evening of November 6, 2011 (a Sunday night) as two snowstorms started to blanket Anchorage. His roommates reported him missing the next morning. The disappearance prompted an intensive search which included mountain rescue teams, ski patrols and search dogs. He was found early the following Wednesday outside a hotel near the campus, wearing athletic shoes, a jacket and blue jeans but no hat or gloves. He was suffering from hypothermia and severe frostbite on his feet and hands. The hotel manager said that when Cheseto was found, paramedics could not remove his shoes because they were frozen to his feet. Cheseto's hands are expected to recover but his lower extremities were severely injured and required amputation. He is expected to remain in hospital for recovery and rehabilitation. Cheseto had been been depressed when he disappeared over the suicide of his teammate and fellow Kenyan William Ritekwiang in February 2011. Ritekwiang, 23, was found dead in his apartment near campus with no signs of foul play. He was a second-year student and another academic All-American runner.

Cuban-born Fernando Rivas, 59, has been arraigned on charges of coercing a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct and distribution of child pornography in South Carolina. Rivas who was educated at New York's Julliard School, was arrested at his Charleston home on April 19, 2011 following a police investigation. Officers found photographs of a naked four-year-old girl restrained in handcuffs and other bondage-type devices. Police documents show that Rivas has admitted handcuffing the child, taking the photos and emailing them to two other individuals.

The decision to investigate Eliyahu came after he was quoted making several anti-Arab comments in interviews with the media. Eliyahu was one of 18 rabbis who signed a petition in October 2010, urging Jews to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews – a move seen as being directed against Arab students enrolled in Safed’s college. Some 50 rabbis eventually endorsed the so-called "rabbis' letter." The criminal investigation opened by Weinstein will not focus on the "rabbis' letter," however, but rather on personal remarks made by Eliyahu. After a series of complaints were lodged with the Attorney General's office regarding Eliyahu's anti-Arab remarks, Weinstein decided to investigate whether any criminal intention could be found in the remarks. In 2010, Eliyahu slammed those who accused him of being a racist, saying a survey showed that 74% of the Israeli public supports the letter. He added that he believed the letter had backing from God.

While all of the patients in the study required surgery, black patients were 26% more likely than white patients to undergo riskier and more expensive emergency diverticulitis surgery rather than elective scheduled surgery for their condition, the Hopkins researchers found. Black seniors also spent more time in the hospital recovering from their operations and the costs of their stays averaged nearly $30,000 more than those of comparable white patients. The researchers say that while lack of insurance is often a major driver of racial disparities in health care, their analysis shows that even with equal access to a doctor, race-based differences in outcomes persist. "Even if everyone has coverage, black patients are doing worse, so we need to find out what else is going on," says study leader Eric B. Schneider, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgical Trials and Outcomes Research. "Maybe then we can make a difference." Schneider and his team analyzed data from more than 50,000 Medicare patients who underwent surgery removal of part of the colon with or without or a colostomy procedure between 2004 and 2007 in the United States. The researchers, adjusting for age, gender and other underlying illnesses, found that being black was associated with a 28% increase in in-hospital mortality, regardless of whether the patient underwent emergency or pre-planned surgery. Previous research has found higher rates of mortality, complication and readmission among black surgical patients when compared to white patients undergoing similar procedures. Schneider says the conventional wisdom is that black patients' poorer outcomes can largely be accounted for by differences in socioeconomic status, including health insurance coverage and greater underlying comorbidity. The new research contradicts that hypothesis, he says. Schneider says that past research has shown that even when they have insurance, black patients are less likely to go to the doctor than white patients, even for routine preventive services such as vaccination. Black patients may also have more undetected or undiagnosed illnesses than white patients, as research shows black patients are less likely to undergo diagnostic evaluations than white patients.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Peter Bradley explains how Newt Gingrich had a chance to bring about the end of affirmative action but instead chose to become one of its defenders. This in spite of the fact that affirmative action is overwhelmingly unpopular with the Republican base and the Reagan Democrats — white blue collar workers who are the GOP’s only real path to a sustainable majority.

Acuna Public Safety Department said in a statement that the three were on patrol in the same unit when gunmen kidnapped them. The officer's bodies were found an hour later in a residential area of Acuna, which is across the border from Del Rio, Texas. They had been shot and their hands were handcuffed, the police department said. Authorities say that the Zetas and the Sinaloa drug cartels are fighting each other to control smuggling routes in the state of Coahuila, where Acuna is located. Recently, gunmen killed a federal prosecutor for the state of Coahuila when he was about to leave his home in the city of Torreon and gunmen set a fire at the office of the Torreon newspaper El Siglo and fired shots at it. Authorities in the neighboring state of Durango said that soldiers dug up the remains of seven people from a pit. Durango state prosecutors said that troops found the remains in the town of San Juan del Rio, about 60 miles north of the state capital, the city of Durango. More than 400 bodies have been found in a series of clandestine graves in Tamaulipas and Durango states since April 2011. They are believed to be a result of turf battles between drug cartels. In Hidalgo, the home state of Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, state police chief Damian Canales said that authorities detained eight local police officers for working for the Zetas. Canales said that six of those detained were officers for the town of Actopan and two for the state capital of Pachuca. He said that they were detained after the arrest of the former police chief in the town of Arenal, who authorities say was in charge of recruiting police officers to work for the Zetas. Canales said that the Pachuca city police officers told investigators the Zetas paid them about $360 a month.

The intelligence agency said that it had arrested a spokesman for the group, who told them that he was sponsored by a politician in Borno state. Boko Haram is blamed for a growing number of deadly attacks in Nigeria. These include the UN headquarters bombing in Abuja in August 2011, which killed 24 people. Boko Haram said that it had carried out bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern town of Damaturu recently, in which at least 63 people were killed. The targets of these attacks included churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", has launched frequent attacks on the police and government officials. Parts of the group say that they want sharia law more widely applied across Nigeria, but most factions are focused on local issues. The secret police (SSS) said that they had discovered links between Boko Haram and regional politicians after the arrest and questioning on November 3, 2011 of a spokesman for the group called Ali Sanda Umar Konduga. Police say that Konduga was the Boko Haram spokesman quoted in the Nigerian media using the name Usman al-Zawahiri. "His arrest further confirms the service position that some of the Boko Haram extremists have political patronage and sponsorship," SSS spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar said. The statement also said that Konduga had been behind threatening text messages sent to judges and politicians. The attacks in Damaturu followed a triple suicide bomb attack on a military headquarters in Maiduguri, in neighboring Borno state. Boko Haram launched an uprising in northern Nigeria in 2009 which was put down by the Nigerian military. Boko Haram's leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was captured by the army, handed over to the police, and later found dead. The group has since re-emerged, carrying out a series of shootings and bombings. There has been speculation about whether Boko Haram has links with external extremist groups, including al-Qaeda's North African branch.

They were buried in pairs in baskets placed around stone funerary towers. Researchers said that their ages ranged from newborns to three years old. The archaeologists believe that they belonged to the Kolla culture, which ruled parts of the Puno region of southern Peru between 1200 and 1450 A.D. All the bodies had a volcanic stone placed on their chest, and were surrounded by a variety of offerings, including animals, food, dishes and pitchers, archaeologist Eduardo Arisaca said. Researchers at the site say that ceramics with paintings of scenes of war found with the bodies suggest the children were sacrificed during a period of conflict between the Kolla and a rival culture. They said that the bodies were found near a 32 foot tall circular stone tower known as Chullpa Lagarto. The bodies of some 200 people have been unearthed near the tower at the Sillustani site some 800 miles south-east of the capital, Lima.

Jesse Saldivar, 48, killed toddler Sabrina Saldivar, aged just three, and her mother Veronica Erazo-Alderado, 30, in Las Vegas, Nevada, police said. Police were called when the mother did not turn up for work, after she was meant to drop off Sabrina at the home of Saldivar - her ex-boyfriend. The tragedy was made all the more worse by there being a 13-year-old son left behind. The couple had reportedly broken up months before.

Fathering what one official called a network of children allows the immigrants to claim that their right to a family life will be infringed if they are sent back to their homelands after serving time in prison.

Researchers found links between impulsivity and a rarely researched gene called NRXN3. The gene plays an important role in brain development and in how neurons function. The newly discovered connection, which was more prevalent among men than women, may help explain certain inclinations toward alcohol or drug dependence.

Documents filed by the City of London Corporation as part of an attempt to evict protesters said that half of school parties had cancelled trips. Local business takings had fallen by up to 35%, the documents claimed. Recently the City of London Corporation resumed legal action against the camp, which has been outside the cathedral for a month, after talks failed. Within the documents a statement given by John Zuber, a City of London police inspector who visited the camp, said that urination and defecation were major issues. Police received complaints from the cathedral about members of the camp continually urinating through the fence of the Chapter House and the Cathedral itself, Zuber said. On one occasion a member of the camp had urinated through the window of the Crypt Restaurant. Meanwhile, he said a member of the camp had been arrested after being found in possession of Class B drugs and what is currently believed to be a liquid Class A drug. Zuber also said that there had been complaints about drinking. "There appeared to be a group of 10-15 hardened drinkers within the camp who would drink into the night, abuse members of the public and create a noise nuisance." Arrests linked to the camp had included those for possession of a bladed article, failing to register a new address under the Sexual Offenses Act, theft, assault on police, breach of bail, breach of the peace, being drunk and disorderly and possession of drugs, his statement added.

The poll finds that 56% of Americans surveyed are neither supporters nor opponents and 59% say that they don't know enough to have an opinion about the movement's goals. The survey, however, does show an increase from 20% to 31% in disapproval of the way the protests are being conducted.

Marco Magallon, 29, has been charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 14. Officers say that Magallon has been living with the girl's mother. They say that the attacks came while the mother went to work and the girl was home alone with Magallon. The young girl reported the assaults to her mother who contacted authorities. Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews says that Magallon is an illegal immigrant from Mexico and has been living in the United States for about a year. Magallon is currently being held in the Kershaw County Detention Center.